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WHO GAVE THE BOOK OF RIEMANNIAN GEOMETRY TO ALBERT EINSTEIN?
I went to an interesting lecture last night all about relativity and Albert Einstein.
The speaker was Professor Pedro G Ferreira and he gave a very interesting summary of the story of Einstein's journey on the way to creating his famous discoveries.
The interesting part was finding out the Albert got stuck with his research and told his colleagues that he was going crazy. He confided in one colleague who immediately pointed him in the right direction. As he was studying space and time and gravity, which are possibly more related to curves than straight lines the Euclidean geometry that Einstein was using was not applicable as it used only two dimensional objects.
His colleague gave him a book about Riemannian geometry which studies the application of geometry on curved surfaces.
Einstein immediately grasped the differences and was able to continue his research and then went on the create his entire theory of general relativity.
Einstein went on to state that a way of proving his theory that gravity can bend light itself. He told others to watch a group of stars and note their position and then watch the position "change" during a solar eclipse. The measured stars were of course very close to the line of view in relationship with the telescope and the eclipse. It seems that one is able to see stars that are actually behind the sun!
Some time later in 1919 on the island of Principe near Africa, Arthur Eddington went to test the theory that the gravity of the sun would cause the position of the stars to be altered. The theory proved correct and Einstein became an international superstar, winning the noble prize in physics in 1921.
Beyond all these facts is a nice bit of philosophy to inspire us.
Even a genius such as Einstein can get stuck on problems and can ask the advice of others. One has to contemplate that the theory of relativity may have never been discovered if his colleague did not figure out the he needed to give Einstein a book about Riemannian geometry.
Professor Ferreira explained that when a triangle is place on a curved surface the sum of the angles will be slightly greater than 180 degrees. It sounds like an interesting branch of geometry to learn however it seems somewhat confusing to measure the angle of a curved line instead of a straight line.
So the question is, who gave that book to Albert Einstein? Surely he deserves some recognition.
Image: Professor Pedro G Ferreira
The speaker was Professor Pedro G Ferreira and he gave a very interesting summary of the story of Einstein's journey on the way to creating his famous discoveries.
The interesting part was finding out the Albert got stuck with his research and told his colleagues that he was going crazy. He confided in one colleague who immediately pointed him in the right direction. As he was studying space and time and gravity, which are possibly more related to curves than straight lines the Euclidean geometry that Einstein was using was not applicable as it used only two dimensional objects.
His colleague gave him a book about Riemannian geometry which studies the application of geometry on curved surfaces.
Einstein immediately grasped the differences and was able to continue his research and then went on the create his entire theory of general relativity.
Einstein went on to state that a way of proving his theory that gravity can bend light itself. He told others to watch a group of stars and note their position and then watch the position "change" during a solar eclipse. The measured stars were of course very close to the line of view in relationship with the telescope and the eclipse. It seems that one is able to see stars that are actually behind the sun!
Some time later in 1919 on the island of Principe near Africa, Arthur Eddington went to test the theory that the gravity of the sun would cause the position of the stars to be altered. The theory proved correct and Einstein became an international superstar, winning the noble prize in physics in 1921.
Beyond all these facts is a nice bit of philosophy to inspire us.
Even a genius such as Einstein can get stuck on problems and can ask the advice of others. One has to contemplate that the theory of relativity may have never been discovered if his colleague did not figure out the he needed to give Einstein a book about Riemannian geometry.
Professor Ferreira explained that when a triangle is place on a curved surface the sum of the angles will be slightly greater than 180 degrees. It sounds like an interesting branch of geometry to learn however it seems somewhat confusing to measure the angle of a curved line instead of a straight line.
So the question is, who gave that book to Albert Einstein? Surely he deserves some recognition.
Image: Professor Pedro G Ferreira
